Education

I’d like you to know that I really have tried. Whenever the Deputy Prime Minister’s head sticks above the parapet, I do my best to listen to what he’s saying with an open mind, as I would any real politician. But this is often a mistake, for his words are rarely fit for human consumption.
The [...]

This story was “all over the BBC” apparently, but I missed it and it doesn’t seem to have been in the newspapers. It was in the OECD’s Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which was published on 8 October. You would have thought the hell-in-handcarters (handcart, pictured) would have leapt on this paragraph as evidence that the [...]

I was intrigued by a line in Michael Gove’s speech to teachers and headteachers today:
I’m also an admirer of John Blake of Labour Teachers, who has transcended party politics to praise all schools which succeed for their pupils, even if they are academies or free schools…
I hadn’t come across Blake before, but I was sure [...]

No less awed by its architecture, no less humbled by its size, I made my way through the grand archway of my former grammar school in Ramsgate, where I’d been a pupil for seven years. Now studying politics, I was back at my old school conducting research for a dissertation on class divisions, asking whether education and the job market had become the preserve of the privileged, or if someone from my ordinary background could still slip through the net?

One reason Michael Gove will never be prime minister is that he cannot resist a good joke. His speech to the Social Market Foundation yesterday was a joy to read, partly because his mockery of right-on attitudes was so pointed.
Those who enjoy wealth and power in our society – however bohemian their lifestyle, artistic their circle [...]

Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) provide education for children who cannot go to mainstream school. Supporting excluded young people in PRUs can be challenging, especially when it comes to the use and misuse of social media. Stephen Carrick-Davies, author of the ‘Munch Poke Ping’ report shares what mainstream schools can learn from the work being done in PRUs.

With Anti-Bullying Week running from 19-23 November, Lauren Seager-Smith from the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), which is hosted by the National Children’s Bureau, discusses the effects of bullying on our children and young people and what can be done to tackle it.